1. Field of the Invention
Implementations described herein relate generally to processing of electronic media and, more particularly, to the identification of a representative clip for the electronic media.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, online music stores associated with providers, such as iTunes, Real Player, Windows Media Player, Amazon, Yahoo, and Napster, offer a representative clip of songs for free. The representative clip is typically about thirty seconds in length. There currently exists two methods by which the representative clip is selected.
In the first method, human operators select a representative clip from each song. The human operators identify start points for the representative clip. Given that there are multiple languages and thousands of songs released weekly, the first method scales poorly.
In the second method, rules are established for selecting the representative clip. The rules typically identify the first thirty seconds of the song. Slightly more complicated rules might start the representative clip at the first audible sound, so that silence is not included. This often means that songs with long intros or big differences between the chorus and other parts of the songs may be less appealing to potential purchasers because the representative clip does not contain the memorable portion of the songs.